Help

Newsletter

Misplaced funnybone painful

Dying is easy; comedy is hard.

Or so the saying goes

Except in the case of Don Imus, a misplaced funnybone is painful. And potentially fatal.

Imus, a veteran New York radio talk-show host whose program once aired in Savannah, came close to killing his long career when he and one of his on-air buddies started a riff about the young women on the surprising Rutgers University basketball team, which includes eight black women.

Rutgers, a Cinderella team, lost the NCAA women's championship game to Tennessee. Imus was speaking with producer Bernard McGuirk last week and said "that's some rough girls from Rutgers. Man, they got tattoos ..."

As someone who used to appear each Wednesday on a local radio program, I know there are some words you shouldn't say in front of a live microphone, unless you are an insensitive jerk or total idiot.

"Ho" would be one of them.

The smartest rule of thumb is to keep your mouth closed before your brain gets it in gear. The second-smartest rule is to carefully pick your targets. Don't napalm Bambi.

Making over-achieving college kids the butt of a tasteless, throwaway joke, like Imus did, is like stomping through church on Sunday morning in muddy boots and cussing out the preacher.

The ushers will grab you and toss your sorry behind into the street- and rightly so.

Or, if you are a big shot like Imus, you will make the Rev. Jesse Jackson fume about the mainstream media, then preach to your boss that you be fired.

Actually, Jackson is right to criticize the MSM. But not that it's racist. Instead, it's lazy.

You don't see as much ground-breaking or investigative reporting today as you did when large organizations (and even many smaller ones) had their in-house Woodwards and Bernsteins.

Part of the slide is economics. Many of the advertising dollars that support quality, muckraking journalism are being spent elsewhere.

Also contributing to the trend toward less robust reporting is the public's appetite for news as entertainment. Or entertainment as news.

Barack Obama, for example, appeared on "Late Night with David Letterman" on Monday. I didn't hear anything new about his plans to end the war in Iraq, although he looked smooth and dapper in a charcoal gray suit.

Meanwhile, Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert are smart, topical and insanely funny on their cable TV programs. Both mine the news for fresh material every day.

And so does the Don Imus. All do well in the ratings. But they shoot for punchlines, not scoops.

Imus gets paid to be irreverent, cranky and funny. I listened to his program when he was on the air here.

Still, anyone who crosses the line of taste and propriety risks getting busted. Or a bust in the chops.

Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from accountability for what comes out of your mouth. Calling young women "nappy-headed hos" is something you'd expect from Ludacris. Not Imus.

I've also got no problem seeing Jesse Jackson pile on, as he did Tuesday morning on "The Today Show."

Call it unpoetic justice.

Jackson caused ears to burn in 1984 when he called New York "Hymietown." After 23 years, he still has the power.

When it comes to detecting gross insults, it takes one to know one.

Tom Barton is the editorial page editor of the Savannah Morning News. His e-mail address is tom.barton@savannahnow.com.